The Mexican Senate has recognized as genocide the Khojaly massacre committed by Armenians against Azerbaijanis during the Karabakh war in 1992.

Armenian armed forces on February 25-26, 1992 attacked Azerbaijani civilians in Khojaly, a town located in Azerbaijan’s Nagorno Karabakh region. As a result of their actions, which were recognized by the international community as genocide, hundreds of people were killed merely because of their ethnic background, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said Tuesday with reference to the Mexican Senate’s decision.

613 people were brutally killed in the attack, including 106 women, 63 children and 70 elderly. 1,275 were taken captives, while 487 became handicapped and 190 went missing.

The Mexican legislature called for a return of the Azerbaijanis displaced during the 1990s war with Armenia to their homes in the territories which have since been under Armenian occupation. The IDPs and refugees’ return, it said, is to comply with the process of settling the Nagorno Karabakh conflict and with the gist of the Madrid principles, a peace outline proposed by OSCE mediators.

The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, described the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, as a “liar” in a private exchange with Barack Obama at last week’s G20 summit in Cannes that was inadvertently broadcast to journalists.

“I cannot stand him. He’s a liar,” Sarkozy told Obama. The US president responded by saying: “You’re fed up with him? I have to deal with him every day.”

Neither leader apparently realised that microphones that had been attached for a press conference had already been switched on, allowing journalists waiting for a press conference to hear the conversation.

The exchange was first reported on the French website Arrêt Sur Images, and was later confirmed by a Reuters reporter who also heard the remarks.